But then I’d have to leave the house.
I turned in the barstool, hand holding the lighter going still.
My eyes clamped on Lucy’s bedroom door.
A fresh-as-hell memory bled in from the corners of my brain.
The monitors cycled,endlessly. Many different scenes to watch, but only one screen held my attention.
Lucy undressing.
To use those motherfucking buckets we’d given her.
Nitro loomed beside me, his sharp gaze also locked on the feed, his mouth twisted into a smirk.
She moved slowly, movements hesitant, hands making adjustments until she could finally work the zipper around her waist, separating the top of the suit from its lower half.
And, fuck me, her legs were as pale as her face. White like paper. And paper…it burns beautifully.Browning then blackening. Hole slowly spreading above the flame. Any charred remains brittle and flaking after the fire cooled.
My breath caught in my throat. When was the last time I had something so pure to burn? Something so untouched?
The suit pants were down.
Dark leggings beneath stripped away.
Lucy stood, both bottoms pooled around her ankles, wearing nothing but a pair of cream panties to hide her lower body. I wanted the helmet off too. I wanted to see how her face looked as she suffered this humiliation. At least, I thought I wanted that.
I don’t fucking know why, but both Nitro and I wordlessly walked out of the security room when Lucy began shuffling closer to one bucket, not bothering to try and pull her feet free. She would have slipped down the underwear next…
I’d sat on the sofa after, staring into the unlit hearth, while Nitro had carved fresh wounds into the counter.
Lucy.
Her named rolled through my mind so smoothly. It had been a long time since something non-flammable captured myattention this way. I wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing or a fucking terrible thing.
I looked down at my hands, still mechanically turning the lighter off and on. Every time the flame sprung to life, I wanted to slide off the barstool and move towards the barebones room that held Lucy. Every time the flame died, I once again rooted my ass to the stool.
On. Off.
Hot. Cold.
Burn. Don’t burn.
Go to her. Stay the fuck where I was.
It was a perverse game of ‘love me, love me not,’ only I was controlling the outcome. This wasn’t a matter of chance, picking petals off a damn flower.
On.
Hot.
Burn.
Go to her.
I slid off the seat, another memory of Lucy invading. Why was she flooding my brain? She’d only been here for a hot damn minute.
“Knock, knock,”Kane didn’t actually knock. He just said it as we barged into her room.
